Tuesday, September 1, 2015

Ohio store suggests need for "Freshman Son Drop Off"--in order to start a "conversation" about "rape culture"

A store in Columbus, Ohio is trying to turn the tables on some OSU frat guys who put up banners outside their house reading “Daughter Daycare 2.0” and “Dads, we’ll take it from here.” The OSU banners were similar to the Old Dominion frat banners we wrote about last week. In response, the store posted the above picture on Facebook. They say it's an attempt to "start a conversation" about "rape culture."

You may recall that extremist pundits used the Old Dominion banners as yet another excuse to whip up campus rape hysteria and to talk about "rape culture." This Facebook post is just more of the same, tired silliness. Our guess is that the store doesn't really want "a conversation"--that they'd much prefer a monologue. In any event, what more can be said about a made-up culture that has been used to foment hostility to due process and diminish the rights of so many innocents?

This latest Facebook post only underscores what we wrote last week--about how destructive the "rape culture" meme is: "The real problem with the 'rape culture' meme is that it foments rape hysteria and encourages young women to reduce young men to vile caricature and see them as predators."

And that's exactly what this store is doing--it is using a broad brush, under the guise of "starting a conversation," to demonize and shame an entire gender by suggesting that college men, as a class, are in need of a talk about rape.

Rape is not "normalized," it is aberrant criminal behavior that is almost universally detested (try telling these men victimized by rape hysteria that it isn't). Sarcastically reminding teenage men, as a class, not to rape accomplishes nothing. (The store would do well to spark "a conversation" among college women--almost half of all college women think that when a woman gives a guy a "nod in agreement," that isn't enough for consent. It seems the bigger problem is that--incredibly--college women are mistaking their own consent for sexual assault.)

It is amusing that the folks who buy into the "rape culture" meme were among the loudest voices to protest when GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump fear-mongered that rape is normalized among undocumented immigrants. Trump's generalization was horrible, they said (we agreed). But somehow, that same crowd has no difficulty insisting that rape is normalized among mostly white college men. That they can't see their own hypocrisy is mind-boggling, laughable, and frightening, all at once.